For several years now I have been using a scrap book as a Visual Arts Journal for my students from grade 1-6. I know some art teachers prefer a fancier, more expensive, drawing book to use as an art journal but I have found a scrapbook that has almost cartridge quality paper in it for a scrapbook price, so that’s what I use.

I don’t send these Visual Arts journals home at the end of the year unless they are full. I only have my students now for one semester each year and they don’t get enough opportunity to use them and it is just a waste to send them home with only a few pages worked on. The students also like to look over old drafts and artworks and reflect, and giggle, about how much they have improved over time.

So at the start of each school year they work on a journal cover concept that is just for that year level and this makes the 800+ journals I store in the art room easily identifiable so they can be put away in the correct place if they get lost. The journal covers when complete are covered in clear contact (sticky backed plastic) to protect the student’s hard work. As they use the art journals for more than one year they just glue the new year cover on top of the old one.

This is the design brief for my grade 6 journal cover.

choose an A5 photocopied artwork (this year I had 20 different artworks to choose from)

choose an A4 piece of coloured cover paper for the background of your cover

each grade 6 journal cover must include your name and grade. This MUST be easy to read as although you are creating an artistic cover it still has to function as a cover!

each grade 6 journal cover must include an easy to read title, eg: Art/Art Journal/Art Book

the A5 colour photocopied art work must be altered in some way as part of your overall cover design, eg: cut it, tear it, draw on it, collage with it, etc

Why were there 20 artworks to choose from this year? Every year the choice grows as I add the current artist that we are looking at, this year it was MC Escher, and if any student asks for a particular artwork, I also add that to the list of those available. These were the choices for 2019.

Australian Art

Ghost Gums, Central Australia Albert Namatjira

Slumbering Sea, Mentone 1887 Tom Roberts

Shearing the rams 1890 Tom Roberts

Angel 1988 Deborah Halpern

Ship of fools 2011 Deborah Halpern

Wings of life 2014 Dave Behrens

Self Portrait 2013 Dave Behrens

International Art

Broadway Boogie Woogie 1942-43 Piet Mondrian

The parakeet and the mermaid 1952 Matisse

Mona Lisa Leonardo da Vinci

The arrival of Spring in Woldgate 2011 David Hockney

Child with a dove 1901 Pablo Picasso

Weeping Woman 1937 Pablo Picasso

The Scream 1893 Edvard Munch

Sinbad the Sailor 1928 Paul Klee

Castle and sun 1928 Paul Klee

Sky and water 1 1938 MC Escher

Miradauro 1958 MC Escher

The Starry Night 1889 Vincent Van Gogh

The Church at Auvers 1890 Vincent Van Gogh

I am always blown away by the ideas the students come up with.

What do you think of these?

The students finish off with a self assessment rubric. They also assess the cover of a peer using the same rubric. If you would like a copy of this rubric please email me and I will send it to you.

I am currently sitting at Aquapulse, the new aquatic centre in Hoppers Crossing, Victoria, typing this blog post. My 12 year old daughter Georgie and her friend Natalie are screaming down the giant waterslide as I type! I am sitting high up in the tiered seating area looking ridiculous, all rugged up for winter, with my laptop on my knee, while everyone else is strutting around in their bathersI This is all rather weird but such are the weekend pursuits of a hard working Primary Art Teacher!!! Multi tasking is my middle name!!!

aquapulse waterslide hoppers crossing victoria Australia

I don’t know what Pablo Picasso himself would think of these face collages below but I just love them.

Pablo Picasso Picture

picasso altar boy

Picasso Mother

First of all I showed the grade 4 students a range of portraits created by Pablo Picasso which I had on my Pinterest board, on the projector. I also had several Picasso portrait prints hanging up in the art room. The students happily discussed how interesting they were and how his portrait style had changed over time. Why do you think Pablo Picasso displaced so many facial features in his portraits? How does this make you feel? What about his use of colour? A portrait is usually a likeness of another person. What does this say about the displacement of the facial features on these portraits? Well done Grade 4s for your fabulous discussions!

Picasso

Picasso Dora Maar

Picasso

We also briefly looked at Weeping Woman as she is very famous in Melbourne as the National Gallery of Victoria owns her and she was stolen from the gallery in 1986. You can read more about that here.

Weeping Woman Picasso National Gallery of Victoria

National Galery of Victoria water wall

Anyway, after looking and discussing I explained to the students that they were going to be creating their own Picasso style collage. In the past I had done this activity with grade 4 and just got them to draw a Picasso-ish face and I had also done this activity using cut out facial features from magazines. Both times before the students had stated that drawing or putting the facial features into the wrong positions was extremely difficult to do.

Zart Art Face Pack Paper

This year I had discovered this paper on the Zart Art website and knew it would be perfect for this activity.

Grade 4 Picasso simple collage 2015 1

Grade 4 Picasso simple collage 2015 2

So the procedure was

Collect A4 cartridge paper from the resource table.

Draw a head and neck on the A4 paper nice and large. (What do we say – FILL THE SPACE!)

Colour the face using oil pastels. Natural skin tones were optional and up to the individual artist.

Select and cut out desired facial features carefully from Zart Art sheets (that had already been trimmed down into quarter of their A3 size – hey, I’m not silly! And don’t massacre twenty seven eyes just to get to the one you want in the middle of the sheet. Cut out carefully and place leftovers from sheet you are cutting back into the EYES plastic pocket so somebody else can use them! Yes, sometimes the instructions have to be this basic to protect the expensive materials!)

How many facial features can you have? How many do you need? Why? “I want more than one mouth because my person talks a lot!” “I need to give my person 5 ears ’cause they always listen to gossip!”

Glue your facial features into their displaced positions.

Is your person bald? What are you going to do about hair?

Cut out your person carefully and mount them on an A4 piece of coloured cover paper.

Grade 4 Picasso simple collage 2015 3

Grade 4 Picasso simple collage 2015 6

Most of the grade 4 students are now working on their next collage which is again based on Picasso’s portraits but A3 size, incorporating different types of cardboard to create (hopefully) layered facial features! I will write up a blog post on these when they are done.

Hi, I'm Shell, Welcome to the Back Art Room Blog which is about my Visual Arts program and its place in Primary Visual Arts education in Victoria, Australia. I teach Visual Arts at Cambridge Primary School in Hoppers Crossing so here you will find examples of my students amazing artworks, all sorts of things that happen in and around my art room, as well as my thoughts on Visual Arts education and whatever else I can squeeze in! I want to reflect on my own teaching and learning and interact, learn from and be inspired by others.

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